The Masters - The Grateful Dead - Best Live Albums

RtBE loves listening to new music and prides itself on keeping tabs on up and coming artists but in 2019 we are also going to have a monthly spotlight on legendary artists who we really love. We are calling this series The Masters. It will focus on the best albums, live records, transcendent shows and other odd ways we appreciate the artists and their contribution to music, culture and our formation.

For June The Masters focuses on the great The Grateful Dead.

Live music is the best thing out there. Being caught in the moment is religion. Palpable vibes of healing and energy are transmitted and shit...gets...real. For this month's focus, The Grateful Dead may be more tied to the live show than any other rock band in history. They developed a literal touring mini economy and because of the bands massive structure, had to be on the road almost constantly.

The group had many phases and multiple lineup shifts, but the stage is where they truly succeeded as a collective, playing in the moment and without net. The group soared more than non-fans give them credit for and that thrilling collective experience is what kept fans touring the country with their musical heroes.

For other entries in The Masters, when it comes to live albums there were some limits, with the Dead it is just the opposite, there have been so many live releases it is hard to limit this list to "official" releases as prolific taping, the Internet Archive and tons of other sites have made obtaining a certain night in the bands history incredibly easy.

However, since we have been using official releases for other entries of The Masters, we will stick with that for this post and move to personal "Go-To" shows at a later date. We know that times have changed and while One From the Vault and Hundred Year Hall were instrumental to our love of the Dead, these days people do not need official releases to get soundboard quality and are much more likely to just stream a solid show then purchase an "official release". 

With Dicks/Dave's Picks, the criminally underrated Road Trips series and various completest Box Sets being offered up seemingly every month (their whole history will be officially released soon) it is hard to keep track of which shows are officially out there and which are still in the hands of tapers, so for this list we are skipping all of those and just going with live albums released officially by the band. Going to be tough, but we will give this a shot, below are our top five live albums from the Grateful Dead.

As always, these lists are designed to start conversations, not end them.

Happy 10th Birthday to Drive-By Truckers, Brighter Than Creation's Dark

Earlier today we wished Dr. John and Gris-Gris a Happy 50th and now we stay in the south and wish the Drive-By Truckers a Happy 10th on their acclaimed release, Brighter Than Creation's Dark.

The album was the first for DBT without Jason Isbell since their breakthrough Southern Rock Opera. It is a huge record that benefited from the band playing some acoustic based shows on the Dirt Underneath Tour which found the players augmented by Spooner Oldham on keys. The legendary Spooner stuck around for this recording and the whole record is a musical tour-de-force. 

It is a loooooong disk, nineteen tracks and all of them have a lot to say either lyrically or musically. Banjo, acoustic guitars, harmonicas and pedal steels gets more love and the tone overall is softer than the majority of their releases putting a focus on the strength of the lyrics.

Patterson Hood pens nine of them and opens with the heartbreaking story song of "Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife" about Bryan Harvey and his families senseless murders and closes things with the the cinematic John Neff pedal steel laced "Monument Valley".

Like all of the Truckers efforts (at least to these ears) Mike Cooley pulls the best lines, while Shonna Tucker holds her own with three tracks. Cooley's "A Ghost to Most" is his visceral reaction to the lack of relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina and he also supplied the gorgeous title as it is a line in "Checkout Time in Vegas".

From the fuzz guitars on "3 Dimes Down" to the solemn drums on "The Home Front" to the swirling psychedelia of "That Man I Shot" to the defiant balls rock of "The Righteous Path" the group sound so locked in and confident; it is grand. 

While personal tastes finds RtBE gravitating more towards It's Great To Be Alive and for studio work Decoration Day, there is no denying what an artistic achievement Brighter Than Creation's Dark is. In fact one of our favorite writers on music Robert Christgau pegs it as the bands high-point. Check out his full review:

OK, 19 songs, gotta be filler here somewhere, and there is, only it isn't melodic--with all music credited to the band, Shonna Tucker's muzzier lyrics and Mike Cooley's more elusive ones sound as well-turned as those of Patterson Hood, who's never written better. In Hood's songs, an opening act, an alcoholic, a crankhead, a heroic suicide, a heroic survivor and two different soldiers in Iraq fall between an opener where heaven is Saturday morning with your wife and kids and a closer that contemplates "the ironic nature of history." Cooley remains the lowlife specialist, most warmly with lost party girl Lisa and hometown gay guy Bob. Some complain "Bob" is the corniest country song they ever wrote. That's the point--one of several. A

Pretty spot on and elusive...just like this fantastic release from the Truckers. Enjoy a few tracks from it below, buy the record and most importantly catch them live ASAP. 

NYPL Blog Post: Miles Davis- Dark Magus

Hey all, we got our latest post up over @NYPL. You can read it right c'here! It is our newest installment in the Great Albums You May Have Missed series with a focus on Miles Davis live disk Dark Magus.

This disk has been with us for a long time, and it is great to be able to write about it for the day job and have it finish up our Jazzy January series. We still remember grabbing a copy from the second floor of the old Tower Records on Broadway back when it was first released. It enchanted from the get go and was a perfect mix of rock/funk/jazz/punk/whatever in our brains. It was a pleasure to write about it for NYPL and again you can read the full long post here.

Also you should check out Robert Christgau's review of the disk. We will probably write more about the Dean at some point, but it is shocking how many times we will go back to see what he said about an album, after our opinion is already formed, and see him feel the same.

In this case the phrase that stuck with us that Christgau wrote was, "single palpitating organism" that sums it up. This music is as alive now as it was in '97 when the CD came as it was in '77 when they released it in Japan, as it was in '74 when the players played it in Carnegie Hall, just a short walk from the library itself. I can't imagine it won't sound fresh and amazing in 2077 and yet one more reason it was dumb of Ken Burns to not talk about fuison, electric jazz, etc in his documentary.

Enjoy "Wili" broken into it's two parts: